Myth, Crushed to Earth, Shall Rise Again
Friday, Aug 14 2015

Blasted into orbit by a trumped-up (if you will) impeachment and a stolen Presidential election… Stewart has lasered away the layers of hypocrisy in politics and in the media.

—David Remnick, the New Yorker / August 10-17, 2015

I have been a subscriber to the New Yorker going on half a century and a follower of David Remnick’s career as a respected journalist since his days with the Washington Post. That said, the quote above, taken from Remnick’s column on Jon Stewart’s departure from “The Daily Show,” left me shaking my head.

What will it take, short of a shaft of sunlight and a wooden stake through the heart, to kill off the pernicious myth that George W. Bush’s election over Al Gore in the year 2000 was, as hot-eyed Gore supporters insist, “stolen”?

FACT: Following the 2000 presidential election, numerous independent investigations into the Florida vote count – including those of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal (pre-Murdoch) were made – extensive analyses of the returns in all counties. Without exception they came back with the same conclusion: Bush won the state, as the official returns had it, by 500 votes.

FACT: Yes, the outcome of the election was determined by the 5-4 decision of a Republican-majority Supreme Court. And had the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take the case? Then the Gore-tilted 5-0 decision of the Florida Supreme Court would have determined the outcome. The political composition of the Florida Supreme Court? Five Democrats, no Republicans.

FACT: Yes, one state, Florida, won the election for Bush, but if, like Remnick, you can’t shake a lingering resentment of the outcome, turn your peevishness toward the real culprit — a candidate who couldn’t carry his home state. Consider: In 1964 Barry Goldwater lost the presidency in a landslide, winning only five states — but Arizona, his home state, was one of them; in 1972, George McGovern lost in a landslide, but carried his home state of South Dakota; and in 1984 Walter Mondale lost in the worst of all landslides, carrying only one state — his home state of Minnesota.

Proving? That 2000 wasn’t a stolen election but an election lost by a candidate who had only to win a majority of the votes in Tennessee, the state where people knew him best. If he had, the Florida results wouldn’t have made any difference.

Not that all this will have any impact on the myth-makers of the Left, any more than a gilded birth certificate stating that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii has changed any minds among the mythmakers of the Right.

“Obama’s a Kenyan,” say Donald Trump and his fellow birthers. I expect no better from crackpots. But “Bush stole the election”? I expect better from the New Yorker and David Remnick.

Sound bite to remember

“The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”

—Emperor Hirohito, breaking the bad news to his people, 70 years ago this week (8/15/45)

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Victor Gold

About the author

Victor Gold is a Washington journalist whose most recent book was "Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP." A former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush, he co-authored the former president's autobiography, "Looking Forward." Included among his other books is "The Body Politic," a satirical fiction written with Lynne Cheney, then-chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Gold lives with his wife, Dale, and two paleo-conservative cats.
(Photograph by JohnNelsonPhoto.com)